Political Capital » Bloomberg National Pollhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital
Politics blog featuring the latest news and analysis from Washington and the US. Political editors provide insights & data about today’s politics.Thu, 07 Aug 2014 19:48:32 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.2Bloomberg by the Numbers: 4.3%http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-25/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-4-3-2/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-25/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-4-3-2/#commentsTue, 25 Mar 2014 09:00:52 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=125477About 3.3 million hourly workers ages 16 and older, or 4.3 percent of all hourly workers, earned wages at or below the $7.25 federal minimum in 2013. More than 75.9 million workers were paid at hourly rates last year, accounting for 59 percent of all workers, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report. The […]

The share of workers earning an hourly wage at or below the federal minimum fell from 4.7 percent in 2012, according to the report, which is based on estimates from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. For many workers who earn less than the minimum wage, tips supplement hourly wages.

President Barack Obama wants to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 by the end of 2016, saying an increase would lift millions of low-wage workers out of poverty. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants the Democratic-led chamber to consider a measure to raise the minimum wage next week.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said yesterday that a wage hike is a “very bad idea from a number of perspectives.”

“Probably the biggest is it would actually hurt job creation, especially among the low-skilled workers,” Holtz-Eakin said on Bloomberg Television’s “Bottom Line.”

Sixty-nine percent of Americans support a minimum wage increase, though 57 percent say it’s unacceptable if it means job losses, according to a Bloomberg National Poll earlier this month.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-25/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-4-3-2/feed/0Bloomberg by the Numbers: 53%http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-24/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-53-2/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-24/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-53-2/#commentsMon, 24 Mar 2014 09:00:10 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=125307About 53 percent of Americans disapprove of President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul four years after he signed it into law. That compares with 41 percent who approve of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, according to a Pew Research Center report. Still, of those opposed to the law, more want to see lawmakers make […]

Still, of those opposed to the law, more want to see lawmakers make the it work rather than fail.

White respondents disapprove of the health-care law by about two-to-one ratio, while black Americans support it by more than a four-to-one ratio. Hispanics are evenly divided on the law, a sharp drop from that ethnic group’s super-majority level of support last fall, according to the report. Younger Americans are more supportive of the law than older people.

In a Bloomberg National Poll earlier this month, a 51 percent majority said the law “may need small modifications, but we should see how it works,” compared with 34 percent who would repeal the law and 13 percent who would leave it as is.

About 52 percent said that political candidates’ view of the health-care law would be a “major factor” in determining their candidate choice in the November congressional elections, according to the Bloomberg survey. Opponents of repealing the Affordable Care Act are more motivated to participate in the election than the law’s supporters.

“Since I signed the Affordable Care Act into law, the share of Americans with insurance is up, and the growth of health care costs is down, to its slowest rate in fifty years – two of the most promising developments for our middle class and our fiscal future in a long time,” Obama said in a statement yesterday. He signed the measure into law on March 23, 2010.

The administration, which has been trying to recover from political fallout from the botched rollout of its health-care website, “will spend the fifth year of this law and beyond working to implement and improve on it,” the president said.

The law known as Obamacare has been “implemented irresponsibly” and led to the cancellation of millions of insurance plans, the Republican National Committee said in a statement yesterday.

The deadline for signing up this year and averting any 2014 tax penalty for lacking health insurance is one week from today, and the administration is beating the drum:

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-24/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-53-2/feed/0Obama’s Floor, Party’s Midterm Wall: 40 as the New 50http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-16/obamas-floor-partys-wall-40-as-the-new-50/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-16/obamas-floor-partys-wall-40-as-the-new-50/#commentsSun, 16 Mar 2014 22:55:13 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=124445For some time now, in the daily tracking of presidential job approval at the Gallup Poll, President Barack Obama has run as low as 39 and 40 percent in the public’s measure. The president’s approval ratings hit that trough in early November, as news of the partial federal shutdown spurred by Republican insistence on blocking […]

President Barack Obama waves to guests as he walks across the South Lawn before leaving the White House on March 11, 2014 in Washington, DC.

For some time now, in the daily tracking of presidential job approval at the Gallup Poll, President Barack Obama has run as low as 39 and 40 percent in the public’s measure.

The president’s approval ratings hit that trough in early November, as news of the partial federal shutdown spurred by Republican insistence on blocking “Obamacare” yielded to news that the Obama administration had botched the rollout of the health care exchanges opening under his own signature Affordable Care Act.

Since Nov. 2-4, in the Gallup track, Obama’s rating has bounced along that floor of 39 and 40 percent, occasionally rising above 40 percent and peaking at 46 percent in one round of surveys, and stands at 40 percent in the latest polling.

All of which has fed a narrative that is unhelpful for the president’s party heading into the midterm congressional elections in which Republicans hope to take control of the Senate and with it all of Congress.

The president’s approval ratings were running in the mid-40s in the months leading to the 2010 midterm elections, when opposition to the president’s health care law played a role in congressional campaigns, and the Democrats lost control of the House.

Even in the best of times, midterm elections don’t tend to play well for the president’s party, but, as Gallup has found in the past, when a president’s approval ratings run below 50 percent, the president’s party has lost an average of 36 House seats in those midterms. That average was boosted by the big loss of 53 seats that the Democrats lost in 1994, during President Bill Clinton’s first midterm elections.

Voter turnout is part of the problem for a president’s party in midterm elections. David Plouffe, who helped Obama win election in 2008 and went on to write about that victory in “The Audacity to Win,” told Bloomberg’s Al Hunt in an interview that aired over the weekend that the party has “a turnout issue.”

The outcome of the special congressional election in Florida last week, where a Republican won by almost two percentage points in a district that Obama carried by 1.5 points in 2012, Plouffe said, “is a screaming siren that the same problems that afflicted us” in 2010 when Democrats lost control of the House “could face us again.”

In 2010, Obama’s approval rating was running under 50 percent.

In early 2014, on average, he’s having some trouble hanging on to the low 40s.

Neither is a favorable scenario for the party in power.

The president’s party can only hope the president has found his floor.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-16/obamas-floor-partys-wall-40-as-the-new-50/feed/0Bloomberg by the Numbers: 17.5%http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-14/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-17-5/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-14/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-17-5/#commentsFri, 14 Mar 2014 09:00:22 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=124351Federal revenues rose 17.5 percent to $144.3 billion last month from $122.8 billion a year earlier. The government’s outlays totaled $337.9 billion, for a monthly deficit of $193.5 billion that was lower than the $203.5 billion deficit the previous February, according to the Treasury Department. The $377.4 billion deficit in the first five months of […]

Federal revenues rose 17.5 percent to $144.3 billion last month from $122.8 billion a year earlier.

The government’s outlays totaled $337.9 billion, for a monthly deficit of $193.5 billion that was lower than the $203.5 billion deficit the previous February, according to the Treasury Department.

The $377.4 billion deficit in the first five months of the current fiscal year compares with a $494 billion shortfall between October 2012 and February 2013. The government ran a deficit of $680 billion all of fiscal year 2013, less than half of the shortfall five years earlier.

“The gap this year will narrow to $514 billion, or 3 percent of gross domestic product, from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2009,” the Congressional Budget Office said in a report last month, as Kasia Klimasinska reported here for Bloomberg News.

Even as the deficit narrows, more Americans disapprove than approve of how President Barack Obama and federal lawmakers are handling the issue.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans “aren’t happy with the president’s handling of the deficit compared with 34 percent who approve of it,” Bloomberg’s Julianna Goldman reported this week for a story on a Bloomberg National Poll conducted March 7-10.

“On the bright side, Obama’s disapproval rating on that issue is 6 percentage points lower than it was in December,” she wrote.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-14/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-17-5/feed/0Florida: What Happened — ‘Amazing Grace?’ — Can’t Blame Turnouthttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-12/florida-what-happened/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-12/florida-what-happened/#commentsWed, 12 Mar 2014 15:20:15 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=124041Updated with White House reaction at 2:50 pm EDT That was a “big win” in Florida for the Republicans. So says House Speaker John Boehner, whose caucus hasn’t grown as a result of Republican David Jolly’s election to the Tampa Bay-area House seat occupied for four decades by the late C.W. “Bill” Young. The party’s […]

David Jolly is interviewed after winning former congressman C.W. “Bill” Young’s seat at on March 11, 2014.

Updated with White House reaction at 2:50 pm EDT

That was a “big win” in Florida for the Republicans.

So says House Speaker John Boehner, whose caucus hasn’t grown as a result of Republican David Jolly’s election to the Tampa Bay-area House seat occupied for four decades by the late C.W. “Bill” Young.

The party’s confidence in the polling power of opposition to “Obamcare” is another question — that has swelled.

Consider: In a potentially “swing district” that President Barack Obama carried by a little more than one percentage point — a few chads better than the margin of victory he claimed at re-election in Florida statewide — a former lobbyist tagged as such during an election campaign that cost both sides and an army of outside combatants more than $12 million defeated one of the Florida Democratic Party’s best candidates by two percentage points.

Alex Sink, the loser, also lost a governor’s race to Florida Gov. Rick Scott by a narrow margin in 2010, yet she had been the state’s elected chief financial officer — and in 2010, and again in this year’s special election, she was deemed the best the party had to offer, a statewide figure going local. Scott poured tens of millions of his own money into that 2010 race. This year, the Democratic Party’s apparent best prospect is a former Republican governor who lost a Senate race as an independent: Charlie Crist.

Never mind that the Democratic Party in Florida appears in shambles today, its bench cleared. It is counting on a former Republican to reclaim the governor’s mansion. The state Legislature and huge congressional delegation from the nation’s third-most populous state are overwhelmingly Republican.

If Sink hadn’t been a supporter of the Affordable Care Act — though she acknowledged it can use some improvement — it’s possible that she could have been a contender. This is a state whose governor has rejected federal funding for expanded Medicaid coverage of the lower-income uninsured, making their purchases of Obamacare more expensive than they would be if Florida were willing to play ball. What’s the matter with Florida?

“Jolly’s win belongs more to the outside groups that rallied to his side than it does to him,” writes Sean Sullivan at The Fix.

Bloomberg’s Greg Giroux was on to this early on:

“Jolly, a 41-year-old former lobbyist who raised less than half of Sink’s $2.5 million through Feb. 19, got help from outside groups that spent more than $5 million, mostly on ads slamming Sink over her support of Obama’s health-care law,” Giroux and Tallahassee-based Toluse Olorunnipa write this morning.

“Sink and Democratic groups supporting her spent more than $5 million as they blanketed the district with television ads, mail pieces and radio spots painting Jolly as a Washington lobbyist with extreme views. Democrats seized on Jolly’s support for restricting abortion, rejecting immigration reform and advocating for U.S. military intervention in Syria.”

The White House was pushing a soft pedal today:

`I am not going to delve too deep into election analysis” while any fair assessment of the Affordable Care Act’s impact for the Republican Party was “at best… a draw,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said. He maintained that the ACA “was not the decisive factor.”

Republicans, for their part, are eagerly seizing on a favorable story line.

Rep. Steve Southerland, the Panhandle politician who rallied the House Republican caucus in the singing of ``Amazing Grace” as they shut down the federal government last fall, says: “America is at a crossroads, and tonight’s victory is a clear indication that Floridians have had enough of the out-of-touch agenda being pushed by the president, Nancy Pelosi, and their allies on the campaign trail… Floridians don’t want a representative who is going to fight tooth and nail to preserve Obamacare, increase taxes, and make it more difficult for hard-working families to get ahead.”

The fact that this is straight from the National Republican Congressional Committee’s script is merely a sign that the party likes the way it looks in Florida 13 and wants to take it on the road.

Rep. Greg Walden, the Oregon Republican running the party’s House campaigns this year, issued this statement as chairman of the NRCC last night: “One of Nancy Pelosi’s most prized candidates was ultimately brought down because of her unwavering support for Obamacare, and that should be a loud warning for other Democrats running coast to coast.”

Still, it’s going to be difficult to blame voter turnout here. Most of the election was decided before Election Day: More than 125,000 people voted early — including 53,000 Republicans and 48,000 Democrats. In all, 184,278 votes were cast, according to the Pinellas County supervisor of elections. That is 40 percent of the 460,600 registered voters in the district — not too shabby for a special election.

The potential intensity among voters motivated to make a statement about Obamacare could actually be part of that “environment” that made this hard for Sink and tough for Democrats attempting to hold on to the Senate this year.

“Republicans on Tuesday night won the closely watched special congressional election in Florida, helping to answer the question we asked before the race: What’s the more potent force — an individual campaign or the overall environment?” NBC’s Chuck Todd amd Mark Murray write. “That answer from last night: the environment. And just how bad does the environment look for Democrats less than eight months before November’s midterm elections? Well, it’s not pretty, according to our brand-new national NBC/WSJ poll. President Obama’s job-approval rating has dropped to a low point of 41%, never a good position for the party controlling the White House.”

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-12/florida-what-happened/feed/0Americans See Income Gap Growinghttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-01-20/americans-see-income-gap-widening/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-01-20/americans-see-income-gap-widening/#commentsMon, 20 Jan 2014 15:00:15 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=117873Getting ahead is getting harder. That’s what a growing share of Americans say, according to a Gallup poll showing a solid majority somewhat or very dissatisfied with income and wealth disparity in the U.S. As President Barack Obama attempts to cast income inequality as the “defining challenge of our time,” a full two-thirds — 67 […]

The data support the view — particularly that data embodied in the so-called “Gatsby Curve,” which suggests that it’s 1928 all over again. The top 1 percent’s share of the wealth in the U.S. was 19.3 percent in 2012, and 19.6 percent in 1928. In between, a greater distribution was achieved, yet the worst recession since the Great Depression and now a soaring stock market have erased that.

As a result, the public perception is that success is increasingly elusive.

Gallup’s Rebecca Rifkin: ”Obama will almost certainly touch on inequality in his State of the Union address on Jan. 28. This will certainly resonate in a general sense with the majority of Americans who are dissatisfied with income and wealth distribution in the U.S. today. Members of the president’s party agree most strongly with the president that this is an issue, but majorities of Republicans – $7.25 an hour in federal law, though higher in many states, and independents are at least somewhat dissatisfied as well.”The White House already has signaled that the president will address the minimum wage in his speech.The president has found some hope for the cause of raising the minimum wage in the moves that many states have taken to set the floor higher than the federal government’s, as Bloomberg’s Phil Mattingly has reported.

Of course, the Gallup poll has found what other surveys — including the Bloomberg National Poll — have found: There is a disparity between Republicans and Democrats in views about economic inequality in the U.S. Still, a majority of Republicans surveyed in the Gallup poll — 54 percent — say they are somewhat or very dissatisfied with the way the money is spread around. As Bloomberg’s David Lynch has written: “The widening gap between rich and poor is eroding faith in the American dream.”

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-01-20/americans-see-income-gap-widening/feed/0Income Gap: Partisan Dividehttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-12-11/income-gap-partisan-divide/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-12-11/income-gap-partisan-divide/#commentsWed, 11 Dec 2013 18:02:13 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=113468While President Barack Obama attempts to focus attention on income inequality, a Bloomberg National Poll reveals a partisan divide about how wide the gap is between rich and poor and just what to do about it. Asked to compare income inequalities now and 10 years ago, 72 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of independents […]

A destitute man sleeps on the sidewalk under a holiday window on Nov. 20, 2013 in New York City.

While President Barack Obama attempts to focus attention on income inequality, a Bloomberg National Poll reveals a partisan divide about how wide the gap is between rich and poor and just what to do about it.

Asked to compare income inequalities now and 10 years ago, 72 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of independents said the gap was getting bigger, compared with 58 percent of Republicans.

When asked if all Americans have an equal shot at getting ahead, 75 percent of Democrats said they don’t, compared with 51 percent of Republicans and 63 percent among independents.

The only group that said everyone has an equal shot was respondents identifying with the Tea Party. Forty-nine percent of Tea Party voters said there’s an equal shot, while 47 percent disagree.

To narrow the income gap, 71 percent of Democrats said new government policies are needed, while 68 percent of Republicans said it would be better to let the marker operate freely. Among independents, 50 percent favored a free-market approach, while 40 percent supported government changes.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-12-11/income-gap-partisan-divide/feed/0Bloomberg by the Numbers: 68%http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-09-27/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-68/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-09-27/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-68/#commentsFri, 27 Sep 2013 10:00:58 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=101940That’s the share of Americans who say the nation is on the “wrong track,” according to a Bloomberg News National Poll conducted Sept. 20-23. That’s about three times the 25 percent of U.S. adults who say things are headed in the right direction, as lawmakers clash over raising the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling and averting […]

]]>That’s the share of Americans who say the nation is on the “wrong track,” according to a Bloomberg News National Poll conducted Sept. 20-23.

That’s about three times the 25 percent of U.S. adults who say things are headed in the right direction, as lawmakers clash over raising the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling and averting a government shutdown before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling without conditions, while Republicans are pushing for spending cuts. Yet 61 percent of poll respondents said that it’s “right to require spending cuts when the debt ceiling is raised even if it risks default.”

The federal borrowing limit must be raised by Oct. 17, when the Treasury Department will have $30 billion left to fund the government, Secretary Jacob J. Lew said in a Sept. 25 letter to House Speaker John Boehner, Bloomberg’s Ian Katz reported.

Also see Julie Hirschfeld Davis’s story for more about what Bloomberg poll respondents said about the economy, debt ceiling and automatic budget cuts known as sequestration.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-09-27/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-68/feed/0Bloomberg by the Numbers: 54http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-02-25/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-54-2/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-02-25/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-54-2/#commentsMon, 25 Feb 2013 11:00:37 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=69291That’s the percentage of Americans who want to delay automatic spending cuts set to take effect beginning this week, according to a Bloomberg National Poll. That majority said Congress should “delay steep cuts to give the economy a chance to continue recovering, which would help reduce the deficit,” according to the survey by Selzer & […]

Forty percent disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president, the poll found. On seven specific issues, Obama’s approval rating ranged from 35 percent on the federal budget deficit to 59 percent on terrorism. On the economy, public opinion is divided, with 47 percent approving and 49 percent disapproving of the president’s performance.

Obama and the Democratic Party he leads have a stronger public image than that of the Republican Party, which lost the presidential election in 2012 and also lost ground in the House and Senate.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said they have very favorable or mostly favorable feelings toward Obama, compared with 47 percent for the Democratic Party and 35 percent for the Republican Party.

By a margin of 43 percent to 34 percent, Americans blame Republicans in Congress more than Obama and Democrats in Congress for “what’s gone wrong in Washington,” Bloomberg’s Richard Rubin reports. Obama and Republicans haven’t reached an agreement to avert automatic spending cuts set to take effect March 1.

In other poll findings, about half of Americans think the housing market will improve over the next year, compared with 16 percent who think it will worsen, Bloomberg’s David J. Lynch reports.

The Bloomberg National Poll was conducted by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa, and is based on interviews with 1,003 Americans ages 18 or older.